It’s the “Idea Channel” for furries – Culturally F’d on Youtube.
by Patch O'Furr
Sometimes the Dogpatch Press tip account gets extra cool messages. Here’s what new friend Arrkay sent:
We here love what you guys post online and what your content does for the fandom, so we hope you’ll take some time to check out what we’re doing!
Where does the love of anthropomorphics come from? How far back can we dig in history and mass media to really get to the bottom of it? Why does every culture across the face of the earth have a fascination with animal-people?
Arrkay got me excited to know more. The show summaries are gold… (everything I’d love to expose here.) Let him explain it in his words:
An all new Furry YouTube show has come on the scene: Culturally F’d.
Culturally F’d explores the furries of the past and present, climbing the ladder of history through mass media in all the different ways humans have blended the properties of man and animal, and why. From Cave Paintings to Comic Books, and everything in between. Culturally F’d is an exploration of what makes everyone just a little bit furry, and what makes furries especially furry.
Culturally F’d does not mean f*cked. It’s the other F-bomb: “Furry” (or furried, furred, or fluffed. It’s whatever you want it to be!). F’d airs on Youtube every other week, and there are already some episodes up online. There will be more updates here on DogPatch too! So keep your ears perked.
What is Culturally F’d?
It’s trying to be almost a V-Sauce or Idea Channel, but for the furry community. Check out what’s released so far:
1. Introduction – Defining “Anthropomorphic” and the overall goals of the channel.
2. Distant Ancestors – The story of the discovery of the Lascaux cave and some of the anthro artifacts from pre-history.
3. The Old Gods and the New – Arrkay takes a look at the gods of ancient Egypt and Rome: Horus, Isis and Pan and their transition into a christian society.
4. Myths and Tricksters or How to Trick a Trickster – A spotlight on North American Tricksters Coyote & Brer Rabbit, their origins, and where they are now.
5. Banned Books – A good number of books featuring anthro animals have been banned in different parts of the world.
6. Animal Uprisings in Human Cinema – A special broadcast from the future that details the clues left behind in Human cinema of their mistreatment of animals leading up to the great animal revolution!
THE LATEST:
7. Usagi Yojimbo and Furry Comics – A showcase of a Furry gone mainstream, we look at the rise in Furry Publishing through Stan Sakai and Usagi Yojimbo.
COMING SOON:
(We have actually filmed all of these in advance, except the bonus episode, and are editing them for release. This is only the first run, and we hope to produce some more once we get into the summer.)
8. TV and Toys – We look at some of the tv shows from the 80’s and 90’s that used “toyetic” strategies to sell us endless toy lines.
9. Furries and the Internet – We look at the earliest days of the internet and the fandom and the formation of Furry Identity.
10. RPGs, MMOs and LARP: Choose your Class – Isn’t it weird that in so many RPG’s there’s the character creation option for an anthro-animal? We also look at the role roleplaying plays within the fandom.
11. Gatherings – How did convention culture get so prominent and popular? Why is it that furries often move in together into all-furry houses?
12. Furryconomics – What is it that furries do exactly? Where we spend our money is a great indication.
13. Conclusions – What was it we were talking about? Why did we even bother? What did we learn? This episode is a look back discussion on this first run.
14. Bonus Episode TBD: Furries and Drag – Comparing performance of Fursuiting and Drag Queens, we will be using footage filmed at Howl Toronto‘s first ever full furry Drag party “The Fur Ball”, on July 11, 2015.
Do you have any ideas for future topics? Want to get involved? Did we miss something or make a factual error? We’re always looking for editors, writers or even guest-hosts. Tweet at us, or post on one of our many walls or send us an email at Culturally.fd@gmail.com.
You can follow Culturally F’d on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, FurAffinity, Weasyl, and of course subscribe to the channel on YouTube.
Who is Culturally F’d?
Arrkay is a Red-winged blackbird from Toronto, who’s curiosity and confirmation bias has led him down the slippery slope to discover the anthropomorphic art of yesterday. He’s the host and writer for Culturally F’d, specializing in regurgitating wikipedia in an entertaining way.
Underbite Dragon is an illustrator from Newfoundland, responsible for the opening titles and art-direction of the project. He’s the man behind the camera and has assisted in the editing process of F’d.
To talk to either of them, the best way is through the Culturally.Fd@gmail.com account.
My thoughts are these: It goes beyond the Anthropomorphism . It is the godly pleasant thankful words that are coming from the furry. That is God talking to people. He is in people unashamed of taking on the form of the humble non-human animals. We are pornographic when we are born. The furry knows that getting slapped by guilt givers when they try to relax about it. The laws surrounding the nude form made adult only with sex with clothed having no sex. That created an imbalance. Nature does not have that imbalance. clothing becomes the thing we value rather than what is under the clothing. The furry is connected to nature being balanced. They are kept from showing it by reason of ungodly laws. I want those laws eliminated. Adult only is a manmade thing. The bible no matter which translation does not teach adult only. We are all the children of God needing to be reborn to be like little children.
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When I was a boy in the 1940s, red-winged blackbirds were often seen in Los Angeles. Since the 1950s, only all-black Brewers blackbirds have been in Los Angeles. What happened to the red-wings?
Just before my stroke in 2005 (I’ve been in a convalescent hospital since then), my local Albertson’s supermarket had two blackbirds nesting in a tree by its main entrance. They didn’t like any humans coming near their tree, and would hover just over anyone entering the market and kick or claw at them. The supermarket tried to cordon off their tree with yellow caution tape, but finally had to have them removed.
Culturally F’d’s broadcast #5 on “Banned Books” repeats the “everyone knows” fact that in 1931 “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” was banned in Hunan province in China, because talking animals were considered too disgusting. But did this ever really happen?
It is reported in many university- and library-published articles on censorship of children’s books. “In 1931 it was banned by the Governor of Hunan Province in China on the grounds that “Animals should not use human language, and that it was disastrous to put animals and human beings on the same level.””
This has been repeated many times, sometimes with interesting variations. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was originally banned in China and other parts of the world because some people objected to the animal characters being able to use human language. They felt this put animals on the same level as humans,” says the “Alice’s Adventures in Censorship” chapter of the anonymous “Lewis Carroll: A History”. That implies that it was banned throughout China. Another essay against censorship repeats, “[…] the reasons behind the banning were very strange. For example, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was banned in China in the 1930s because, apparently, the author had the temerity to make animals speak, thereby placing them on equal footing with human beings,” implying that it was banned throughout China. “Lewis Carroll: A History” begins, “When Lewis Carroll penned “Alice in Wonderland in 1868 […]” Every other source says that it was published in July 1865, and that “Carroll” – the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodson – revised it from his 1862 “Alice’s Adventures Underground”.
“The History of Alice in Wonderland” by Bruce Edwin says, “Back In 1931 however, communist China banned the book in the city of Hunan, due to having talking animals that are treated with too much respect, like humans.” Hunan is a large province in south-central China, not a city, and Ho Chien was a Nationalist general fighting the Communists. The Chinese Communists hadn’t yet risen to power in 1931.
http://newsblaze.com/story/20100403071406ente.nb/topstory.html
Wikipedia, which has been claimed to be both authoritative and riddled with errors, names General Ho Chien specifically as the 1931 governor of Hunan province who banned “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. More detailed sources say that in the Chinese civil wars of the 1920s and 1930s, General Ho Chien was commander of the Thirty-fifth Corps of T’ang Sheng-chih’s Hunan Army in the Nationalist government. In 1930 Ho’s troops clashed with the Communist troops and drove them out of Hunan. He was rewarded by being appointed the provincial governor. “Ho Chien was born in Hunan and received a military education. He worked with T’ang Sheng-chih and was the commander of the 2nd Division of the National Revolutionary Army. Ho’s troops occupied the labor headquarters in Hankow and along with Li P’in-hsien declared martial law in Hankow. After 1949 he went to Taiwan and became a government advisor.” But the more detailed sources on China in 1931 don’t mention any banning of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.
This has recently been cast into doubt. The most detailed source is http://www.answers.com/Q/Why_was_'Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland'_banned. “It is difficult to find information on the banning of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Banned Books Week: September 25–October 2 [no year given]. University of California, San Diego Social Sciences & Humanities Library website says:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
1900
Suspended from classroom use, pending review, at the Woodsville High School in Haverhill, New Hampshire, because the novel contains expletives, references to masturbation and sexual fantasies, and derogatory characterizations of teachers and of religious ceremonies.
1931
Banned by the Chinese Governor of Hunan Province on the ground that “Animals should not use human language, and that it was disastrous to put animals and human beings on the same level.”
However, as they don’t provide a source for this information, it is impossible to verify. (See Related Link below)
The File Room, a website dedicated to the cataloging of banned literature, repeats the claim about the book being banned in Hunan Province and cites its source as Banned Books 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D., by Anne Lyon Haight, and Chandler B. Grannis, R.R. Bowker Co, 1978. (See Related Link below) This appears to be the origin of claims that the book was banned in China, but corroborative evidence remains elusive.”
A search today of Chinese national and regional laws in the 1930s has failed to find any mention of General Ho’s ban. (Incidentally, searches for the book’s being suspended and reviewed in a Haverhill, New Hampshire high school in 1904 have found a confirmation; but nobody has found the supposed expletives or references to masturbation and sexual fantasies in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” that were the reason for the review.)
So is the supposed 1931 ban in Hunan province just an urban legend? People are still looking so it hasn’t been definitely disproven yet, but it does seem as though most of its citations are the result of third-, fourth-, and fifth-hand parroting of an unproven claim.
Interesting, and funny at the same time. Funny, to assume the people who came up with with a hawk-headed god and the man who came up with the white rabbit wearing a hat could be put in the same group, as if the two concepts are the same.
It’s just an opinion, but I (capital I) believe it is silly and a little disrespectful to group 100%animal-headed and 100%human-bodied egyptian gods with the furry fandom.
Anthropomorphism is a vague enough concept to let people share the same fan group even if they reject each other completely. People who like cartoons, people who believe they are werewolves, those who hate porn, those who are here for nothing but porn… the only qualification is claiming to be a member.
They are translating Alice in Wonderland into ancient Egyptian!
“Colleen Manassa Darnell and John Coleman Darnell, the two professors putting “Alice” into hieroglyphs, said Late Egyptian, which had its heyday between 1500 and 1000 B.C., is a flexible language well-suited to a Wonderland translation. For the Mad Hatter, Mr. Darnell said, “we cannot yet decide which of the numerous wigs and headdresses he may have.”
And as far as the White Rabbit’s pocket watch, “I’m not sure how we’re going to handle that one yet,” Ms. Darnell said. “There are hares in Ancient Egyptian that we could refer to. He could possibly be carrying a small water clock.””
Modern furry art isn’t part of the cultural heritage which developed the Egyptian gods or Ganesha or ancient pagan rites, but it’s most certainly an indipendent rediscovery and repurposing of the underlying ideas. First and foremost, the idea that anthropomorphism is essential to our understanding of the world. For both ancient egyptians and furries animal traits and behaviors are to be admired, desired and looked up to as role models rather than being mere projections of human traits and behaviors (which has been the prevailing view in most of Western culture, from Aesop all the way down to Disney and even behaviorist zoology). It’s a subtle difference in approach but it’s very substantial.
Yeah I’d agree it’s not a direct line from the Egyptian gods to now, but conceptually i can be. I suspect that’s pretty close to what you’re saying. Camille Paglia’s book Sexual Personae talks about “the invention of the Western eye” in the art of Egypt. She talks about symbolic concepts in it being passed on to greece, rome, and us. She names things like the cultural invention of interior design that you can see in their tombs, and the hard edged pyramids they built to assert human consciousness beyond time. There’s all kinds of fun asides in the book, like a couple pages about worship of cats in egypt – she says cats represent night and primitivism and the Sphinx is a monument to combining that with modern consciousness.
I agree, the aesthetical and technical influence is well documented. I don’t think there is a direct connection to the meaning of ancient deities though, because furry as a culture didn’t stem from cultural conservationists but from the sci-fi/fantasy fandom which was already appropriating images of the Egyptian gods and other art of the past to express its own (modern) meanings and purposes. I think appropriation in general is a severing of direct cultural lines. (Which is a good thing because it allows to keep good concepts around even when the original meaning is long dead.)